Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 3:1-15. God calls Moses from a burning bush and commissions him to collaborate in delivering the Israelites from Egyptian oppression.

Romans 12:9-21. This week's focus is on being one body in Christ—loving one another, respecting and forgiving one another, loving and reaching out in care to enemies, and blessing even those who persecute us.

Matthew 16:21-28. Any who will be disciples of Jesus must lay claims to themselves aside, pick up a crucifix, and follow him.

Exodus 3:1-15.
God calls Moses from a burning bush and commissions him to collaborate in delivering the Israelites from Egyptian oppression. Moses questions his worthiness for the task, and God answers each excuse.

Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c (UMH 828).
The hymnal selection of verses differs from the appointed Psalm verses (The hymnal verses reflected the Common Lectionary, but the Revised Common Lectionary we adopted in 1992 altered the psalm verses and occasionally offered a different psalm). The lectionary’s verses are more reflective of the Exodus reading. See "Psalms for Singing" for another alternative.

Romans 12:9-21.
Last week's text reminds us we are one body. This week's focus is on being one body in Christ—loving one another, respecting and forgiving one another, loving and reaching out in care to enemies, and blessing even those who persecute us. Even as Christ overcame the power of sin and death, so his body, the church, is called to overcome evil with good.

Matthew 16:21-28.
Last week, the confession. This week: the cost of that confession. Jesus tells the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, where he will be killed. Peter rebukes him, and Jesus tells Peter that he is a stumbling block to him by thinking as humans think. Any who will be disciples of Jesus must lay claims to themselves aside, pick up a crucifix, and follow him.

Throughout this entire Season after Pentecost, the focus is on helping one another take our next steps in faithful discipleship and ministry in Christ’s name and the Spirit’s power. However you plan during this season, keep that overarching and underlying purpose in mind.

Schools have probably started by now where you are. For resources and suggestions for worship, see our Back to School Resources

This is Labor Day weekend in the USA. This is a good day to recognize workers and employers in your congregation and community.

Today’s texts provide singular examples of God’s call and human response. While you may be tempted to summarize each briefly to cover them all in your sermon, unless that is truly the best way for your congregation or faith community to hear and experience these texts, let me heartily encourage you to pick just one—and indeed, to pick the one that stays with the stream of texts (Exodus, Romans, Matthew) on which you and your planning team have decided to focus.

Each of these texts, if serving as the focal text for the day, could call for a different arrangement of worship space, different ritual actions accompanying each, and radically different selections in art, music and soundscapes. Vive la difference! And remember that if you are preaching from the lectionary, you and your worshiping community will have the opportunity to make a different selection three years from now if that is what you need to do at that time.

Exodus: The Way of Deliverance, Week 2
God Is Out to Save Others through Us

This week’s reading from Exodus offers one of the most memorable scenes from the Hebrew Bible— the story of Moses and the burning bush. Moses “turned aside to see” a bush that was on fire, but not being consumed. What began as a curiosity in the desert turned into an occasion for God to commission Moses to lead the way to freedom for his people, now slaves in Egypt. Toward the end of the verses for this week, we hear the beginning of Moses’ doubts about his capacity to carry out so remarkable and demanding a mission.

This story has so many points of resonance throughout Jewish and Christian history you may have difficulty knowing where to begin or focus as you plan worship that engages and responds to this text. You and your team may also bring many presuppositions, expectations, and even (or especially) movie portrayals to this scene (Charlton Heston’s portrayal in The Ten Commandments, or perhaps The Prince of Egypt), which may either illumine or cloud our ability to hear its call in its original context and for today.

But the overall theme is clear: God intends to save God’s people and to work with Moses to bring about God’s salvation.

This brings us to the main questions for today: How is God demonstrating God’s intention to save people where you are—both in the recallable past and in the present? How have people in your congregation and community been called by God to be part of this salvation? How are people being called to do this even now, this very day? How are they resisting that call (if they are)? And how is God answering this resistance?

In Your Planning Team

A suggestion as you plan for today: Consider asking all of your team members to name the presuppositions and “screenshots” they bring to the text, up front. Get them all on the table. Talk together about how these might impact your reading of the text when you come to it. Decide together which of these may be helpful and which may get in the way.

Next, read the text together, out loud several times, with several different readers. Use the classic discipline of lectio divina. On the first reading, ask for each person to identify what stands out calling for more attention for each person. On the second, encourage folks to listen and reflect on that part of the text more carefully and reflect on what God is saying to each person through what stood out. On the third reading, ask what commitment each person will make to act on what has caught his/her attention, what he/she has turned aside and seen and now will do.

This exercise in your planning team may yield a variety of answers to each of the questions, but you may discern across these answers some common themes that God may be calling a number of folks in your congregation to consider together. Though the imagery itself is lush and may tempt you to use lots of multimedia to try to capture all of it, less may well be more. Consider using for art, imagery and soundscapes those elements that best or most frequently evoked responses and commitments from across your group, those elements that contribute to the shared focus around which you are seeking to develop worship today.

A few years ago, Discipleship Ministries developed a one-day Bible study event called “Turn Aside and See,” based on Exodus 3 and 4. While the event is no longer offered, you can still download the resources used in the event. You and your team may also find these helpful as you plan worship around this text today: Congregational ScriptPowerPoint and Video Files ZIP. For the ZIP file, be sure to extract all files into a single folder. That should enable PowerPoint to play the videos automatically.

Romans: Theology for Ministry, Week 11 or 6 or 2
Conformed to the Body of Christ: One Body, Diverse Members and Gifts

Romans moves to the heart of Christian ecclesiology today. Today’s reading is no random list of good ideas, any more than the church is a random assembly of acquaintances who like to spend Sunday mornings together and perhaps do a few educational and charity projects from time to time. Instead, these are the very kinds of practices that enable us to function as one body in Christ.

C.S. Lewis noted in The Four Loves that "friendships have to be about something, even if it is only an enthusiasm about dominoes or white mice.” Merely being together is not enough. Christian love, whether as friendship (philia) or divine love (agapé), is about living out the way of Jesus as we participate in God’s reign with each other in the church and in the life of the world around us. Oneness and unity are not all we are made for as Christians. We are made for expressing that oneness as we engage God’s mission in the world.

That is why Paul moves from the image of the body last week, which could feel rather ingrown and insular, to such radical sets of outgoing action in the reading this week. The focus of this body is not on feeding or sustaining itself, but on being Christ in the world. That is why and how we can do all that Paul commends here— outdoing each other in showing honor, never flagging in zeal, giving generously to help others, blessing those who persecute us, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, showing respect toward all, and always loving enemies to the point of offering hands-on care for them. In particular, blessing those who persecute was not theoretical “nice talk” from Paul; it was a call to a concrete response to a lived reality Christians were facing then and have faced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries more than at any time on record. Paul did not commend these as ideals but as basic practices of Christian community made possible because we are in Christ who has overcome evil, sin and death.

Put another way, these practices are both means of grace and fruit of grace. They are means of grace that open us to experience God’s saving power in us as we engage them. And the more we become open to that power in us—individually and collectively—the more these practices become habits that yield a rich harvest all around us.

In Your Planning Team

What Paul commends here constitutes a peculiar way to live in this world. Though it appears to have been standard practice for early Christians and early Methodists, few “regular church-goers” these days attempt it. Still in every generation there have been some Christians (and probably some others as well!) who have. Who are the people in your congregation or community for whom these practices are an embedded part of their lives? How do they teach others to live in this way? Hint: You might check to see if there are any Covenant Discipleship groups, monasteries, neo-monastic communities, or Amish or Mennonite groups nearby, as these have often ordered their lives to take up just such practices.

When you have gotten in touch with some of these folks and listened to their stories, or perhaps even invited one or more of them to your worship planning team meeting, design the worship space, visuals, media and soundscapes around what you have learned from how these folks live and how you are ready to commit and invite more of your congregation to commit to living in Christ as Paul here commends. What does worship space look like if you are really called to love and honor one another? What is the shape of the assembly—straight lines? A circle? A circle of circles? Tables around a central table? How might worship space reflect a commitment to love and care for enemies, and to bless those who persecute you?

If you find yourself serving in an inflexible worship space that does not allow for such creative seating, remember that people can still stand or at least turn their gaze differently. Think about how to reconfigure the orientation of the worshipers even if you cannot reconfigure the orientation of their pews or chairs.

Matthew: On Mission with the Master
Aftermath of Confession: The Call to Die and Be Raised

Matthew offers “the rest of the story” of Peter’s confession begun last week. Confessing that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God requires of us more than to say the words or be inspired by them. It requires us actually to follow where Jesus leads, even when that may mean harm to ourselves and others with us on the journey. Jesus was clear with his disciples in these verses that his way would lead to his own arrest, torture, execution and death, as well as to his resurrection. Resurrection, though, presupposes death. God’s reign often inescapably will suffer violence in this world, but even in doing so will triumph. Only Satan offers triumph without struggle and suffering.

Jesus is clear. “If any would come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” He doesn’t mean give up chocolate, put on a necklace and attend worship regularly. Discipleship to him is neither game nor ritual pastime. It is an entire way of life, for life and for death.

Self-denial in our culture usually has come to mean an attempt to control oneself or try to keep oneself from certain behaviors. That’s not the sense of the verb in its original cultural context, however. “To deny oneself” is to refuse one’s own ultimate ownership of one’s life and direction, and instead hand these over to another, in this case, to Jesus. Taking up the cross is the sign of that commitment. Jesus rebuked Peter for his refusal to acknowledge the cross as a necessary component of both Jesus’ messiahship and his own discipleship. If Jesus was going to face a cross, that meant Peter may have to do so as well. Peter was not just looking out for Jesus. He was also looking out for himself!

Following the way of Jesus can lead to our own deaths at the hands of those his proclamation and way threaten. The message of God’s reign is revolutionary to every earthly establishment, and such establishments may be likely to respond with violence or the threat of violence when they understand this.

In Your Planning Team

Who are the Christian revolutionaries, which is to say disciples of Jesus Christ (as Jesus puts it most simply here) where you are, or who influence the folks where you are? What does their self-denial look like? How do they take up the cross? How have they found their souls in the midst of a life that risks losing their lives? Some of these, like those who first heard these words from Jesus and through Matthew, the apostles or other gospel writers, probably have some testimony about seeing “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” How do these folks describe that? Where do they see that? Where do they not see that?

Now think about the arrangement of worship space to help acknowledge the revolutionary character of discipleship to Jesus. What artwork, dance, drama or other expressions do you have available to express the biblical understanding of self-denial, taking up the cross, and following Jesus? How and where will the Scriptures, or at least a gospel book, be physically present in your midst today? Where in particular will the font be—where we make vows to renounce (deny!) the lordship of the evil powers of this world, promise to resist them, and give ourselves in full allegiance to Jesus Christ? Where will the Lord’s Table be? What about seating for the people in relationship to these two sacramental spaces? How might the arrangement of other signs—a processional cross or crosses in artwork or projected imagery, a Paschal or Christ candle, censer and incense (if you use these), among others support the hearing and following of this gospel word today?

Embodying the Word: Responding to the Word for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost 2014

Exodus: The response you craft should relate to the focus you have chosen.

Is it on the act of turning aside to see? Then offer time for folks to do just that, in reflective prayer, or journaling, or worship stations that allow people to do both.

Is it on God’s compassion that moves God’s action and call to engage Moses in that action? The consider using the Methodist Social Creed Litany as a response with some kind of opportunity for ritual action and commitment to further action as a follow-up to each stanza.

Is it on Moses’s excuses and God’s assurance of presence and power to fulfill the calling? Then consider using the Confession of Faith of the United Church of Canada (“We are not alone”) in the United Methodist Hymnal (882).

Romans: What sort of direction do you need the response to take? Will it be more of a confession of sin? If so, consider singing “Confession” (Worship&Song, 3138). Or might it be more aspiration? Try “Come, Let Us Dream” (Worship&Song, 3157). Or perhaps more of a confession of faith. If so, consider “The Lord of Life, a Vine Is He” (Worship&Song, 3155).

Matthew: Either in the sermon or as part of the response, encourage folks to stand as able and embody each of the three core actions Jesus describes, one at a time, with a posture or set of physical gestures—deny self, take up the cross, and follow Jesus. Each person is likely to do each of these in different ways—be sure they have the room needed to do what they need to do with their bodies. After each embodiment, or after all three, ask persons to debrief what each did with two or three others around them, what it felt like, and what they have learned about what each action requires of them -- both from this act of embodiment and from other elements in the sermon today. Give at least 10 minutes for the embodiment and debriefing. Move from these different embodiments into a corporate, unison confession of faith, such as the Nicene or Apostles Creed, whichever you did last week.

BOW 566 (Exodus, Romans). The sung version is available in the 1966 Hymnal, no. 813.

Or employ some of the imperatives that Paul gives in the Roman's text, such as one of the following options:An assisting minister (deacon or layperson) addresses the congregation with one of the following:

a. Go now as God's servants:
Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil,
hold fast to what is good
Do not lag in zeal,
be ardent in spirit,
serve the Lord.(Then the presider blesses the people.)

b. Go now as God's servants:
Rejoice in hope,
be patient in suffering,
persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints;
extend hospitality to strangers.(Then the presider blesses the people.)

c. Go now as God's servants:
Bless those who persecute you;
bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice,
weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another;
do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;
do not claim to be wiser than you are.(Then the presider blesses the people.)

d. Go now as God's servants:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil,
but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.(Then the presider blesses the people.)

Preaching

A friend of mine once told me a story about a man she had once interviewed in her service on the Board of Ordained Ministry. This man was there for one of his early interviews, and so he was telling the committee about how he got the call to become a pastor.

Now, as is common among pastors and would-be pastors, the man kept saying God told him this and God told him that, leading and pushing and opening some doors and closing others, until he realized that God had given him no other choice than to become a pastor.

For example, God told him to join the army. God told him, after he had finished his tour of duty, to start a business. God made the business fail. God told him to leave his former denomination and become a Baptist. God told him to leave the Baptists and become a Methodist.

Everyone listened in silence to this man’s story until, finally, after he had said that at an annual conference that he had attended, God had made him so disgusted by some of the issues that were being discussed there that he had left the conference and had gone to a church to pray, where he asked God about what he was experiencing.

So finally, after listening to all of this, one of the committee members couldn’t stand it any longer. He said, “And what did God tell you when you were praying in the church?” Well, the candidate’s mouth dropped open, and he just sat there, so the committee member asked him again, “What exactly did God say to you?” “Well...” the man said, but he never did give them a definite answer.

In the story of how God called Moses to lead the chosen people out of Egypt, there is not any easy confidence about God, nor any cozy familiarity with God, but there is also not any vagueness about what God says.

First, when Moses is alone out in the wilderness, there is a burning bush that catches his attention. Next, Moses becomes curious about it, so he goes a little closer; and a voice calls out, “Moses, Moses!” Moses is shocked, but he answers, probably rather uncertainly, “Here I am.”

And Moses is so scared that he covers his face with his hands. But the voice won’t stop. It goes on, saying, “I have seen the suffering of my people in Egypt.”

Now, let us recall that the very reason that Moses was out there in the wilderness in the first place was because he was in trouble with the law in Egypt, and on the lam, after having killed an Egyptian guard for mistreating one of the Israelite slaves. So he was familiar with the situation in Egypt.

In fact, before God ever called Moses, Moses had already been so frustrated by all of the injustices he had seen going on that he had lost his favored status as the Pharoah’s adopted grandson and become an outlaw instead.

In thinking about this, especially in comparison with the gentleman who appeared before the Board of Ordained Ministry, I believe that God does not call people in order to further their personal ambitions. Rather, God is concerned with a greater good more than in personal ambition. In fact, it seems that God usually calls a person right when that person has, out of genuine concern for others, begun to set aside his or her own personal ambitions. But not only that: The fact is, God does not call only pastors. Moses wasn’t ever a pastor or a priest. He wasn’t very good with words. It was his brother, Aaron, who always had to do all the talking.

All Moses did, all of his life, was stand up against wrong and fight for what was right and just. All Moses did was to lead his people for forty years through the wilderness, at the end of which he himself never got to set so much as one foot into the promised land toward which he was leading them. It’s a sad thing. It seems like he didn’t get much in the end for his efforts.

So what was his reward? What did he get for all his trouble?

Well, his reward was the deep and abiding knowledge, down in his heart and soul, that he had tried to do what was right. It was the reward of knowing that he had tried to listen hard to the voice of God and to do what God was calling him to do.

How much are we caring about right and wrong in this world?

How is God calling you and the congregation with whom you serve to new places of ministry and service?

Sometimes I’m amazed at how the lectionary seems always to speak to whatever the needs of the moment might be. In this case, reading this passage from Romans, I can’t help but think about the situation unfolding as I write this in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.

On August 9, 2014 Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old-citizen of St. Louis who was visiting his grandmother in Ferguson, and who had recently graduated from high school and was bound for trade school at Vatterott College this fall, was shot and killed by a police officer, sparking racial tension, riots, demonstrations, looting, and national outrage.

Brown was initially stopped for jaywalking. Although the police said the young black man attacked the officer and tried to grab his gun, further investigation suggests that he was unarmed and had his hands up in the air in a position of surrender. Still, the autopsy showed that Brown was shot at least six times, twice in the head. He was shot in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

Protests, both violent and nonviolent, erupted almost immediately. The suburb is home to a 67 percent black population; but its mayor, the majority of its city council and school board, and the bulk of its police force, are white. (Only three of the fifty-three officers employed at the Ferguson police department are black.) The governor has deployed the National Guard to maintain order and declared a state of emergency as of this writing.

It is unclear at this point whether Mr. Brown had, in fact, participated in a robbery prior to the shooting. What is clear, however, is that even if he was guilty of that crime, it didn’t have anything to do with what happened to him. The officer who shot him had no knowledge of the alleged robbery when he stopped Brown for jaywalking. Rather, the officer seemed to be responding to a perceived slight from Brown and his friend after the police ordered them to stop walking across the middle of the street.

Whatever else has happened by the time you are reading these words is, in my mind, immaterial to why I bring this up in the context of this Scripture lesson from Romans. Even if it turns out that the officer was fully justified in his actions, it doesn’t change the difficulty of how we interpret passages like this one when things like this happen in our world.

What are we to say about Paul’s admonition to “hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good,” to “out do one another in showing honor,” “be patient in suffering,” “bless those who persecute you and bless and do not curse them,” and “live in harmony with one another,” not being haughty or claiming wisdom? How are we to preach this Scripture in light of these recent events? How are we to respond to his advice to the members of the church in Rome to “not repay anyone for evil, but take thought for what is noble in sight of all?”

And especially, how are the folks in Ferguson to follow Paul’s teaching that they are to “live peaceably with all” and “never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God” and instead, feed their enemies, give water to the thirsty, and overcome evil with good?

Paul’s advice is good and doable on a personal level; but once you move it to the corporate level, it becomes much more complicated. Trusting in the actions of governing authorities requires that we trust the government; and that has become difficult in a place like Ferguson, where lack of representation by the majority in the government and unjust targeting of minorities is part of the everyday reality of life. Furthermore, acts of corporate vengeance, however justified they might be, always seem to spiral out of control.

Jesus taught that to suffer innocently and not retaliate is a greater victory than vengeance.

And it seems pretty clear that while protests may well be in order, looting, burning stores, and engaging in other acts of vengeance are not. Likewise, while a peacekeeping “force” is certainly needed in this situation, police appearing on the scene of the protests in armored vehicles and riot gear and employing tear gas, smoke bombs, and rubber bullets in response to the public outcry reads more like retaliation than simple crowd control.

How are we who call ourselves Christians and who sit on the sidelines of this crisis and watch it unfold to respond?

How are we to conduct ourselves when faced with these situations?

Do we not have a biblical mandate to at least comment upon not only the plight of our brothers and sisters in this particular situation, but the plight of all who suffer at the hands of their oppressors?

What are we to say about it from our pulpits, be they in communities who identify more with the actions of the police, or in communities where they identify primarily with those who have threatened to continue protesting until the system of unjust representation in Ferguson is finally addressed?

How do we advocate for all involved and support just resolution and not supporting acts of vengeance, while at the same time not abandoning God's call upon us to care for the lost and the least?

I don’t pretend here to have any answers. And I thank God that since my role is only to offer preaching notes and helps, it is not up to me to bring this sermon to resolution for every person in every place, but rather to simply raise the questions brought about by the Scriptures as they are confronted with the situations of our shared life.

But please know that I will be praying that you who are preaching know your community and will know best how to bring closure to this particular conversation, at least for today, even while knowing full well that the conversation is not over when the crisis in Ferguson comes to an end.

In the meantime, as you sort through your own ending, let me offer you what I hope will provide some helpful insight from Eleazer S. Fernandez writing in Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4:

Against the culture of conformity and acquiescence, those who live in the power of the crucified Christ embody virtues and practices that promote life-giving relations. They engage a way of being and acting that seeks to embody genuine love, mutual regard, humility, solidarity, peace, and harmony. It is a way of being and acting that cares not only for members of the faith community but also for the wider society, particularly the strangers in our midst. The Christian tradition has called this practice hospitality.

Hospitality is a distinctive mark of the church, which was born out of hospitality and spread because of hospitality.

If, in the spirit of the Reformation, justification by faith is the article by which the church stands or falls (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae), hospitality is the practice by which the church stands or falls. Hospitality does not mean simply welcoming newcomers into our congregations and doing charitable acts, important as they are. We must move beyond hospitality as charity to hospitality as an act of justice. Hospitality as charity offers crumbs from our tables; hospitality as justice offers a place at the table. In the context of our predatory global market, hospitality involves transformation of the system that is inhospitable to many.

As many commentaries point out, verse 21 marks a turning point in the story, the beginning of the end, if you will.

I could be wrong, but I am guessing that not many of us, if we were to encounter the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel in the world today, would follow him in what he was doing. I mean, really! It was offensive. It was hard stuff that required great sacrifice. It was not the way of popularity and four-figure membership congregations, but rather, the polar opposite. It was a difficult path marked by failure, disappointment, and pain.

Undergo great suffering at the hands of those in control? No thanks. Deny ourselves, our own ambitions, and the proven strategies for dashboard success in favor of putting ourselves on a cross to be publically humiliated and die? I think I’ll pass on that one too. Losing our lives, our parsonages or housing allowances, and our pensions in pursuit of what he calls “life”? I’m sorry, but no. That’s not the life I had in mind.

Lest you think that I am any different from most of you, I assure you that I still have a very long way to go on that road to perfection that John Wesley called us to take.

And yet, this is exactly the life that not only John Wesley, but Jesus, calls us to pursue. It is important to note that the confession of faith in Christ is only the first step of discipleship. While it is important that we know in our minds who Jesus is, it is even more important that we live as Jesus taught. We are told, in no uncertain terms, to “get behind” him and follow along.

How did Jesus teach discipleship? He demonstrated it by the way he lived his life, and he told us to imitate his actions as closely as we can.

This morning I met with some of my colleagues here in the Leadership Resources division of Discipleship Ministries. You know what the topic of our conversation was? The Wesleyan Way of Discipleship. And just like with Jesus and the disciples, we talked about how Wesley’s way isn’t always the popular way, or the sexy way, or the easiest way to numerical success. But it is the way of Methodists.

Here I am grateful especially to my colleague Steve Manskar, Director of Wesleyan Leadership at the Discipleship Ministries, whose work and commitment continually reminds us all why we are Methodists.

Steve notes that congregations that embody the Wesleyan way of discipleship exhibit the following characteristics:

Commitment to ongoing catechesis and formation in Christian doctrine.

Faithful worship that draws on the rich liturgical resources of the tradition.

Regular celebration of Holy Communion and use of other occasional ritual means of grace such as the Love Feast and the Wesleyan Covenant Service.

“Watching over one another in love” through small groups, mentoring and accountability.

Emphasis on cultivating intentional relationships and ministry with the poor.

Consistent concern for inviting individuals and families into relationship with Jesus Christ, with intentional initiation into discipleship.

Attending to identifying and cultivating those gifted for leadership.

Methodists are thus marked by a different set of values and priorities, a different lifestyle, a different way of being, from other people, be they Christian or not. We are seeking after holiness of heart and life in everything we do, and it is not easy. It means that others may find our practices out of step with popular culture, counter to consumerist values and lifestyles, and seeking after a life that is not congruent with that being taught by the latest lifestyle improvement guru. It means that our growth is predicated on deep commitment to discipleship, and transformation both inward and out. As I said to my colleagues, it is the difference between a slow-rising yeast bread and one made to quick-rise with chemical leavening agents such as baking power.

The New Interpreter’s Bible commentary notes,

The call to discipleship is a matter of confession, which means declaring one’s faith in Jesus as the Christ, as God’s definitive act of revelation and salvation. The word used to mean “confession” also means “Martyrdom,” in the sense of witness. The giving of one’s life is presented as an act of testimony to a truth bigger than oneself. Its result may be literal martyrdom, as had happened in Matthew’s church and in every generation since, and continues today. But it may also mean the daily giving of oneself away in commitment to Christ. . . Orientation toward God, revealed in Christ as the Lord of one’s life, rather than idolatrous self-orientation, is the decisive, crucial difference. The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume VIII, New Testament Articles, Matthew, Mark (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 352.

Jesus’ warning to his followers is very clear: when we set our mind on human things, rather than on divine things, our lives can become a stumbling block to others in their pursuit of Jesus. As you think about the congregation you serve, the focus of your ministry, the decisions you make as you plan worship, and the goals of your church, pray that the Spirit may guide you to set your minds on divine things, that your witness may lead others to be marked by holiness of heart and life.

For more information on the Wesleyan Way of Discipleship contact Steve Manskar, [email protected].

Prayers

Holy God, we bring our gifts to your altar this morning, remembering that Jesus told us that if we were truly to be his disciples we would need to “deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow.” It’s tempting to try to follow, without taking the cross; or to try to follow, without denying ourselves. More often, we seek to simply take the name of “Christian” without the denying, the taking of the cross, or the following. Guide us, Lord, on this journey of discipleship. Use these gifts, and use us. In our Savior’s holy name, we pray. Amen. (Matthew 16:21-28)